1. The Post Office Get ready to imagine a world without the Post Office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the Post Office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Check Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with check by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the Post Office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the Post Office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

6. Music This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."

7. Television Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

8. The "Things" That You Own Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

Most brick and mortar stores will disappear particularly multi-purpose stores like sears and walmart. A few will survive where the real estate is cheap but even those will feature a lot of online ordering stations for later delivery.

6
posted on 02/14/2013 3:29:04 PM PST
by muir_redwoods
(Don't fire until you see the blue of their helmets)

Music existed long before there was an industry dedicated to crushing it, and will continue to exist after that industry dies. Given YouTube and social networking, it may actually be easier to reach an new audience these days.

Music and televisoin...well, goood riddance. I have had enough of the $hit they call music and the same old tired tv shows on different channels that I have seen at least a hundred times. Good, now my husband will let go of cable TV.

Thanks for posting. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon a 2009 FR thread this morning after a colleague referenced the days in the “word processing department”. This thread talks about technologies that are about to go extinct.

We may well be obsolete. Think about it. As computers become smarter and smarter robots will be more able to fly aircraft, handle automobiles, control traffic, etc. Powerful computers have already displaced many humans from their jobs....project that forward in time. Without planning on our part, the future may be ugly as computers and robots try to dispose of us, their creators, controllers.

33
posted on 02/14/2013 4:06:31 PM PST
by Rapscallion
(Homeland Security is buying millions of bullets - for you. So you can't buy ammo at all.)

Funny how this says privacy will be gone without condemning for that the very things on this list it so lauds. Writing checks is more private than magnetic strips, just as real cash is more private than all. Using some kind of Internet for saving files is definitely a privacy/corruption problem, and so on. Anything involving networked electrons is a threat to privacy. That includes your e-books.

Nevermind it’s easier to flip through a real book to find something fast than swipe-swipe-swipe. And land lines are great when cells stop working, and they just fit better. Unless you’re hooked to the new FO, which doesn’t work when power is out.

There is so much great music being made every day that I don’t have time to discover and listen to it. Unfortunately, we won’t hear any of it on the radio. Certainly, music CDs will be obsolete ten years from now.

41
posted on 02/14/2013 4:41:49 PM PST
by KevinB
(A country that would elect Barack Obama president twice is no longer worth fighting for.)

> “Nevermind its easier to flip through a real book to find something fast than swipe-swipe-swipe.”<

Who searches by swiping? Enter a search term and search a thousand pages in a second. I’ve been a lover of books (the physical objects) all my life, but in recent years have totally gone over to ebooks. Virtually all the classics (and many non-classics) are available in electronic form for free.

Though not as good for books that have large diagrams, for reading most kinds of texts ebook readers are much better. They are light, easy to hold, and you can adjust the text size and font to suit you. I consider the ebook reader one of the greatest inventions of the last half century.

Wow. That is really satanic. Paul tells Christians to speak to each other in spiritual song, and I’ve noticed that many times when God is speaking in the Old Testament it is in verse. Can’t wait to hear the music!

Which may be why music today is so awful. It is a reflection of the soul. I listen to country and classical, and sing in the morning. No more classic hymns on the radio anymore. Today’s kids won’t know the words to Amazing Grace.

Not only watches but alarm clocks. Although I have about 30 stored in a bag in my jewelry box and haven’t worn one for at least 10 years, my youngest grandson and all his friends wear them. Might be because this group of parents has decided that kids don’t need cell phones.

49
posted on 02/14/2013 5:53:29 PM PST
by Grams A
(The Sun will rise in the East in the morning and God is still on his throne.)

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